Founder’s accountPathfinders for Hope
In his own words
How this started.
Nine years unsheltered. I am the Pathfinders for Hope founder, and this is how it started, and why I built what I built.
My name is Marco Cardenas, Pathfinders for Hope founder.
I am an Army veteran.
I am from the streets.
Across my life, I have been homeless for nine years.
Account 01 / 06
This is not research. This is memory.
In 2021 I had a cleaning business in San Antonio. A team under me. We did COVID cleanups — the buildings nobody else would walk into.
Then I caught COVID. So did most of my crew.
All of it, gone.
A lot of people lost businesses in those years. It took something else from me. My mental health went. I started using.
I lost my mind.
Diana was my girlfriend at the time. She went through every day of this with me.
We drove west.
We totaled both vehicles. After that it was the two of us on foot.
Every city had organizations that said they helped people on the street. I called all of them.
Not available.
Here's another number.
You're on the list.
Nobody ever called back.
There were nights in Colorado we slept in the car because there was nowhere else. The cold did not care that we had made the calls.
Las Vegas. Four churches around one block. One to sleep. One to eat. One for rehab. They handed you a pillow, a mattress, a blanket. You slept outside on the ground.
They fed us. They meant it.
We were in the same spot ninety days later.
We rode a Greyhound to Anaheim and slept two weeks on the benches inside the transit center. A transit center is not a shelter. It is a building that stays open.
By then I had stopped calling. Not because I gave up — because I had run it enough times to know the answer.
Account 02 / 06
Four organizations. Not one ever knew whether we made it out.
Then Oceanside. And in Oceanside I stopped being able to hold it.
Depression is not the word. There is no word for where we were.
I had a weapon on me and I had made the decision.
Then we heard San Diego had organizations that actually got people off the street. Real ones.
That was the last thing I had. A rumor about an organization, and high hopes stacked on top of it.
I pulled out my phone to get us a ride. Diana's was already dead.
I opened the app. Typed the address. Never got to press the button.
The phone died in my hand.
I broke down harder than I ever have. When it was over there was nothing left. Not sad. Not angry. Nothing.
Five cities. Four states. Every time the system said: not here — try someone else.
A system that never tells you no can still take everything. It just takes longer.
If you are where I was — call or text 988.
Account 03 / 06
That was supposed to be the end of the story.
Twenty minutes later I noticed a car.
Third time, it stopped. She rolled down her window.
"Are you Marco?"
I said yes. Who out here knows my name?
"I'm here to pick you up."
Why?
"I'm your Uber driver. You requested a ride."
I looked her dead in the eye and told her that was not possible. My phone died before I sent it. I never finished the request. I never entered a destination.
Did somebody pay for this?
"I don't know. I'm just here to pick you up."
Where are you taking us?
"I don't know. Let's talk about it in the car."
Every red flag was up. I did not care. Diana and I got in.
I told a total stranger everything. How I got there. What was in my head. And that when she dropped me off, I was going to end my life.
She did not flinch and she did not let it go. She kept asking until I told her the truth.
"Give me the weapon."
My first answer was no. Something in me said do it. I handed it over.
She never took us to an address, because I never gave her one. She drove us to a hotel and paid for the room out of her own pocket.
Then she asked, do you know Jesus? I said yes.
"He does not want you to end your life. He has big plans for you. The Holy Spirit is telling me right now."
"Tomorrow I want to take you to church. Will you come?"
I did not hesitate.
Account 04 / 06
I called agencies in five cities and not one ever found me. A stranger circled the block three times until she did.
She did not hand me a number.
She did not put me on a list.
She stayed in it until we were safe.
That is the difference between a referral and a handoff.
The next morning we were at the Rock Church in Point Loma. The pastor told our story from the front of the room.
We got stuck in Old Town San Diego for a year. That is where it changed.
I got tired of being tired. I kept running it back. How did I get here. How do I get out.
Then it landed. It was not that nobody cared. The churches cared. The agencies cared.
Nobody was responsible for me.
The second that call ended, I stopped existing to them.
Nobody is coming.
If that is true — then who is going to help me?
The answer was me.
Six months of Dr. Jordan Peterson and Dr. Gabor Maté, every single day.
I taught myself life skills.
I taught myself to write a resume.
I went out and got a job and worked it until I had enough to get off the street.
I should not have had to be the answer. But I was the only one still tracking my case.
In 2023 I called my mother and asked to stay while I got on my feet. Amtrak to Fairfield. Then Vallejo, for a window cleaning job.
I met the people who are still my friends today. I asked them why they were out here.
They read my own life back to me.
That is when I knew it was not me.It was the machine.
June 2024. Wilson Park. I was visiting friends when the sweep came through.
Account 05 / 06
I had seen enough.
That day gave me a purpose.
I stopped using.
Then I went and got the proof — because my story is one man, and one man is an anecdote.
In 2025 I surveyed 228 unsheltered men in Vallejo.
Not one man out of 228said the system worked.
Solano County is not short on programs. They are there. They are funded. The people inside them are trying. I have sat with staff who stayed late to make one more call for someone. The failure is not effort and it is not funding. It is that no single record follows a person from the organization that referred them to the organization that was supposed to receive them.
Every organization in that chain can do its job correctly and a person can still end up back on the sidewalk, because each one only sees its own piece. The outreach worker closes the case as referred. The receiving agency never knows a referral was made. Nobody is lying. Nobody is lazy. The information simply stops at the edge of each organization, and the person keeps walking.
People fall outbetween them.
That is the same gap I fell through in six cities.
I brought it to the Housing and Community Development Commission. Commissioner Bre Jackson was seated as Chair. She asked to hear more. She has been building this with me ever since, and she now chairs our board.
What came out of that room was not a program idea. It was a requirement. If the failure happens at the handoff, then the handoff is the thing that has to be tracked, and it has to be tracked by somebody who is accountable when it does not land. Not a report written after the fact. A record that stays open until a person is confirmed to have arrived somewhere.
That is a harder promise than it sounds. It means an organization has to answer for what happened after the call ended. It means a referral cannot be marked done because it was sent. Most systems in this sector measure what was offered. Almost nothing measures what was received. That gap is not an oversight by the people doing the work. It is a gap nobody was ever assigned to own.
What I built is calledOperation Iron Gate.
People do not fall out of the system by accident. They fall out at the handoff — and nobody ever finds out.
No dead ends. No handoff without a confirmed receipt. Nobody handed a number and forgotten. That is what a no-dead-end referral system means, and it is the whole design.
Nobody was tracking me.We track everybody.
Account 06 / 06
That is the part we are fixing.